NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2264535" data-attributes="member: 4937">I agree with Henry here.  I wouldn't agree with the assessment that everyone that could do the job already has it.  Just like American Idol, if you do a talent search of DM's you'll turn up some high quality acts.   But I do agree that there is a big difference between running a fun adventure for the boys and being able to excite people enough and excite enough people to get them to buy your product.  For example, I'm a pretty good writer - so far as we are confining what we mean by 'good writer' to random BBS posts and college essays.  As evidence, I'll point out that both the first post I made on this messageboard and the first post I made on the wizards messageboards were picked up and republished by persons in positions of power.   I'm a much better writer than average.   I might even be 'good'.  BUT, as we start moving up to more and more demanding mediums, then the limitations of me as a writer are going to become more and more evident.   Eventually, my writing is going to appear mediocre and unimaginitive.  That's going to be true of the majority of DM's out there - even the better ones.  If you add on top of that the problem that first I have to get the initiative to write 64 or 128 or whatever many pages of orginal material, edit it, correct it,  work with a publisher on it and so forth, then you are going to find that the number of people with both the will and the abiliity are very small.Which is why that when I'm highly critical of someone, you should take it only in the context of the level of ability that they are displaying.   I can say with what I feel is perfect truthfulness, that Stephen King is somewhat lacking in ability as a story teller - but that doesn't mean that I don't feel at some level he's a very good story teller.  It's just that I'm comparing him to someone of the level of say Mary Bujold, and Bujold just tells a much tighter story.  Likewise, I might say that Raymond Fiest is lacking in the craft of wordsmithing, but thats only because I have something like Gene Wolf out there to compare him to.  None of that means I don't like Raymond Fiest's works, it just means that I can appreciate Raymond Feist for what he is and not what he is not. And I try to hold the craft of adventure design/writing to the same sort of high standards, precisely because I care so much about the hobby.  It bugs me that for all the technical advances we've made in the hobby and for all the higher standards of professionalism that the hobby evidences, that there aren't more good examples of the craft out there.</blockquote>

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